It is not yet know where the cuts will come or how many United Kingdom staff will be hit – but if they are uniform across the workforce 1,000 based in Britain will go.
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The California-based technology giant, which is shifting its focus from hardware to software, employs more than 70,000 people worldwide. This move is happing at a time of intense competition from rival companies such as Juniper Networks and Huawei. The job cuts, which will begin in the first quarter of 2017, are part of the company’s restructuring plan enabling it to optimise its costs in lower growth segments and invest more in key areas such as security, IoT, data centres and cloud services.
The shakeup announced Wednesday means about seven per cent of Cisco’s roughly 74,000 workers will lose their jobs beginning this summer. Robbins said security posted a revenue gain of 16% this quarter and gross and operating margins have improved. “Those businesses have great margins and it’s part of the overall transition”, said chief financial officer Kelly Kramer.
The gradual move to fast-growing areas such as the cloud, the Internet of Things and security is a response to dropping demand from telecom carriers and enterprise customers for Cisco’s traditional lineup of networking hardware devices such as switches and routers.
Robbins, who replaced John Chambers in July past year, has been steering the company toward more software and subscription-based services, states a Reuters report. Cisco shares fell about 1 percent in after-hours trading. Excluding items, the company earned 63 cents per share.
Cisco Systems is planning to lay off between 9,000 and 14,000 workers, technology news site CRN reported.
Cisco, which expects to start laying off employees from the first quarter, said it will take a charge of about $325 million to $400 million in the quarter.
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Analysts on average had expected a profit of 60 cents and revenue of $12.58 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The only field with positive growth has been its switching unit with revenue up 2 percent.
